On fish

This was my Year in Art picture of the day by an Italian artist of the late Baroque period called Giacomo Ceruti. Not going to talk about the picture, which is a bit - well -baroque - but it did make me think about fish and why there is a group of people who think it is alright to eat fish but not meat. Which sounds very judgemental. And I don't mean to, because I sort of understand. They are mostly out of sight are they not? They swim under the water, whether it be at sea or in a river or lake, and they don't make noises or relate to people at all. I completely discount the marine mammals here by the way - they are in a category all of their own.

Fish though are less like people than animals and it is therefore easier to eat them. Well I think that's what it is. Though the only time I have ever been anywhere near catching a real fish was really rather a disconcerting and marginally distressing experience. My small son got a temporary obsession with fishing and so we tried with just a line I think and lo and behold we caught a fish - which was very messily disposed of by the slightly older children who were with us at the time. My son didn't pursue his interest in fishing much longer.

But that's the think about we humans and our eating of other live things isn't it? We don't really want to see the messy bit. Or think about it. Meat is meat and animals are animals - two different things - until your young child asks you as it confronts its dinner, "what animal is this mum?". As I have said before, like most of the world's population I don't like to think about it too much. If I did I would become a vegetarian - and I can eat vegetarian for a few days, but after a while I find it unsatisfying. I need at least a small piece of meat or fish - some bacon, an anchovy. It seems more nourishing somehow.

Fish is a very basic food for a large part of the world's population of course. Fishing is an ancient skill and one that is still pursued by the world's poor. But it is also big business and very mechanised - from the factory type trawlers, to the massive fish farms that provide us with our salmon and barramundi here in Australia. Not to mention all those shellfish, that have been farmed since ancient times. As with everything there are pros and cons with aquaculture and I'm sure those for and those against are probably not going to change their minds. Is it the saviour of the world's fish population or the end of it?

I feel a bit guilty, but I do love the fish market at the Queen Victoria Market. The variety and beauty of the fish is just amazing. And we should eat more fish - it's so good for you. But we don't eat much and we eat no shellfish at all because my husband won't. And we haven't got fish for dinner today either. And I'm also not very good at cooking it.

Interesting picture though - half portrait, half still-life. He apparently did a lot of paintings of beggars and poor people - of whom this boy would have been an example. I wonder why?